How legal startup CanLaw is helping the Malaysian public find lawyers

Founded in 2016, Malaysian legal startup CanLaw was established as “a FREE service that makes finding the right lawyer a quick walk in the park”, as the company website details. As part of Asia Law Portal’s continuing coverage of the Asia-Pacific region’s legal startup ecosystem — here’s our recent interview with CanLaw’s Founder and CEO, Loo Soon Yi:

What is CanLaw and where does it fit in the legal services ecosystem?

CanLaw is a legal-tech startup providing a lawyer-discovery platform. Put simply, we help members of the Malaysian public find lawyers.

Up until now, the public could only find lawyers either through word-of-mouth or referrals from bankers and property agents. This is due to lawyers having very limited marketing means as strict publicity rules govern the profession. That notion has driven CanLaw to be in the business of innovating the legal profession – to help people find the right lawyer at the right price; and to provide lawyers with legal means of being discovered by clients. In doing so, our business is ultimately improving access to justice.

CanLaw offers a range of services – do you anticipate adding more services in the future?

Lawyer discovery is only the start for us. As we grow, we will find more ways through which to help the legal industry become more competitive and efficient in delivering legal services. To name a few, e-signature, cloud storage and online website builders are several areas that we are keen to explore and build partnerships within, in the near future.

CanLaw was established in Malaysia. Do you have plans to expand elsewhere in the region or further afield?

As our URL canlaw.asia suggests, we have always had regional expansion in mind. Our focus in the next 3 years is to grow CanLaw into Southeast Asia’s legal knowledge hub and the go-to website for legal service discovery.

Are legal startups becoming a good career option for recent law graduates?

With some 6,000+ lawyers being called to the Malaysian Bar over the past 5 years, coupled with the slowing down of our economy, competition within the legal industry has been heating up.

Legal startups are an avenue through which law graduates can really pick up marketable skills, become more competitive, and differentiate themselves in the long run. By being a part of a startup, they grow more well-rounded as they pick up core business skills such as marketing, sales, operations and finance, all of which are beneficial should they ever choose to run their own law practice.

In fact, many of our current team members are law graduates themselves. By having secured an investment from Brickfields Asia College, we are hoping that more law graduates would seriously consider CanLaw as an attractive career option in the future.

Where else would you get to “do law” and still be at the forefront of technological innovation.

What should readers be thinking about in terms of CanLaw after reading this interview?